How's it going everyone lol

Anyways this is my first time posting but I have lurked here before so forgive me for any newb mistakes beforehand lol.

I finished reading a book called "Day of Empire : How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance and Why They Fall" written by Amy Chua, and I was confused about a certain statement in the book.

Chua writes that due to the mass migration/casualties sustained by the Chinese population during the Three Kingdoms era, barbarian incursions, long war campaigns throughout subsequent dynasties, and the bubonic plague outbreak of 1328(?). The original Chinese race was more or less wiped out or replaced by population of non-chinese stock. I also read on wikipedia(please don't bash me for referencing wiki lol) that Japanese ultranationalist groups during the late 19th to early 20th century also advocated this belief to legitimize their proposition for an invasion of China.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinocentrism

I was wondering if there was any truth to this and if so, any information or details provided would be appreciated thanks.

I have also been reading Chua's book on and off. She's a law professor and not a historian, and I find that her central argument is bigger than the available evidence for it. In order to support a rather politically-motivated theory (that "strategic tolerance" towards immigration has been key to the rise of great empires throughout history), she oversimplifies and overgeneralizes the history of China and other past empires, all without using any primary sources. The book is an interesting read, but I urge advise readers to approach its larger claims with a critical eye.



I don't think Chua ever says this (could you cite a page number if I'm wrong?). She only says that "the sharp line between Chinese and barbarians" had become blurred in north China by the end of the Age of Fragmentation (p. 65). She also says that "the idea that there is a 'pure' Han bloodline defining a 'pure' Han people is not only a great myth, but a relatively recent one" (p. xv). I basically agree with both of these statements, but they are not the same as the one that you say she makes.

You're right that Chua doesn't overtly state that the original Chinese race has been replaced, (I reread the pages that you mentioned) my bad on the quoting part. But is there confirmation that Chua's statement has any support from the historian community as fact?

Assuming that it does and regarding what you said, would this mean that the Southern Chinese are more homogenous than their Northern counterparts? I mean, in keeping with the lineage of the "Original Chinese".

The moment I read a review of her book, I already suspect that this book is just another one of those grandiloquent thesis making work that selectively pick out cases in history to fit the studies. Its obvious that she would choose the Tang out of all the different Chinese dynasties to make a point, but ignored the Han and Ming completely. As a student of strategic analysis, I can't but comment that plenty of "hyperpowers" in history does not fit her model well. It is military dominance, not cultural openness that marked the success of great empires in the past. Not to mention, a few of the examples she gave(like the Dutch) clearly doesn't fit the modern criteria for a "hyperpower" even with a slight stretch of the imagination.

Well, most serious historians no longer buy the idea of an "original Chinese race", in fact they have no interest in the idea of racial purity at all. They are much more interested (especially in Europe and America) in ethnic identity, which is highly subjective and not genetically or biologically determined. And 'Han' is really an ethno-cultural identity rather than a biological race.



If you mean 'genetically homogeneous', then I can't see why that would be the case. There were as many 'barbarian' tribes in south China during the Age of Fragmentation as there were in the north, if not more. They were just different types of 'barbarian', that's all. If you're assuming that only immigrants from north China would have 'pure' Chinese or Han genes (whatever those are), then don't tell me they exterminated all the southern tribes and never intermarried with them?

From an examination of the ridicule that the northern wei official Yuan Shen had of the south it seems that the Southern dynasties were actually less "sinicized" than the north: "The South enjoys a respite of peace in their remote corner...like frogs and toads sharing the same hole, people live together with the birds. Your rulers wear their hair short and never have long heads. The people decorate their bodies. You float on the three rivers or row in the five lakes, but never been steeped in rites or music or reformed by laws. You may have a ruler and a court, but the rule ris overbearing and his subordinates violent...You sirs, are still soaked in the old customs and have not yet been transformed by ritual. You can be compared to the people of Yandi who did not realize that goiters were ugly. Our Wei dynasty has received the imperial regalia and set up its court in the region of Mount Song and Luoyang. It controlled the area of the 5 sacred mountains and make its home in the area within the four seas. Our laws on reforming custom are comparable to those of the five ancient sage rulers. Rituals, music, and laws flourish to an extent not even matched by the hundred kings..."

His full name was Yang Yuanshen, and he was a member of the northern literati rather than the Tuoba/Yuan aristocracy. But I don't think his diatribe against the south, which was supposedly a reaction to Chen Qingzhi's assertion that the Liang dynasty (and not the Northern Wei) held the Mandate of Heaven, should be taken as reflecting objective reality. It merely recycles stock stereotypes of the ancient Yue peoples that hardly applied to the southern literati, and I have a feeling that both the diatribe and Chen Qingzhi's chastened response to it (杜口流汗， 合声不言) were simply made up by Yang Xuanzhi (the author of Luoyang Qielanji) as a sort of psychological comfort following the collapse of the Northern Wei and destruction of Luoyang. That is also why, unlike many historians in China, I don't take seriously Yang Xuanzhi's claim that Chen Qingzhi was awed by the culture of Northern Wei and later told his southern peers: 自晋宋以來， 号洛阳为荒土。此中谓长江以北尽是夷狄。昨至洛阳，始知衣冠士族并在中原。("Since the Eastern Jin and Liu-Song dynasties, we have called Luoyang a wasteland and described the land north of the Yangzi River as full of barbarians. But recently I went to Luoyang, and for the first time realized that the truly cultured literati clans are all living in the Central Plain [rather than the south].")

Yang Xuanzhi was so biased, and had so little real contact with the Liang literati, that it is ridiculous to take an anecdote that he wrote and use it as reliable historical evidence. In fact, the likelihood that he made up the whole story really reflects the surviving northern literati's inferiority complex after the Erzhu Rong disaster more than anything else. To use an analogy: Bruce Lee playing a character who beats up white men and then declares, "I am not a sick man of Asia" actually reflects Chinese audiences' desire to escape from their general feeling of inferiority through fantasy, rather than a reality in which Bruce Lee is actually going around America beating up white men and making them respect Chinese people. Fantasies reflect how we would like to see ourselves, rather than how we really are.

During the late 19th to early 20th century the Japanese would use the concept of 'hakko ichiu' which basically means 'all the world under one roof' to legitimise their expansionist policies on Asia. So by denying a continual Chinese history they could degrade the Chinese as 'uncivilized' people that needed to be 'saved'. But the Japanese ultranationalists would use anything to justify an aggressive foreign policy.
In regards to Chua's book I can't really make a comment since I haven't read it. But writers who make radical theories usually have unsubstantiated evidence and are probably out to make a quick buck. Historians can use what is known as 'multiple attestation' to test a theory which basically means comparing different sources to see if they match up. I think Chua is the only one who has made this radical theory, while hundreds of other historians have proved a continual Chinese link. However there is always room for new interpretation so long as it is actually substantiated.